DJI No Longer Blocks Flights over Airports and Military Bases | Hacker News Reader

DJI No Longer Blocks Flights over Airports and Military Bases

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45 pointswumeow31 comments

I’m not taking sides, but I do have a question for anyone with legal understanding. I feel like, if I worked for a drone company and wanted to roll out a new feature to block flights close to ‘restricted zones’, then the legal department would throw a fit. I can imagine them saying that the new feature would expose the company if the feature ever failed or didn’t have a complete list of locations to block. It’s better to not have any restrictions than to have some and for them to be incomplete or broken.

I just don’t see how this feature wouldn’t be a major liability to DJI. Am I wrong?

DJI introduced multiple "safety" features then lobbied for regulation making those features mandatory. They were already compliant with the regulations but their competitors weren't. It's a standard regulatory capture play.

Its a common sense feature that most people appreciate. Often a consumer getting a drone for Christmas doesn't know they are near a reserved airspace for a hospital helipad.

If the alternative is getting your product banned, I suspect legal would figure something out.

Given the continuing drone idiocies with the California fires, I would expect a blanket ban coming unless an automated system can instantly comply with FAA airspace restrictions.

> If the alternative is getting your product banned, I suspect legal would figure something out. I appreciate the response, but it seems the opposite is happening. They have the feature already and are actively rolling it back. So they must believe the feature’s existence is a bigger threat to the company than not having it at all, right?

Define "bigger threat".

It could be the feature was so half-baked that it kicked in and dropped a bunch of drones out of the sky and DJI had to cough up refunds. It could be that DJI knows something about upcoming legal issues with the current administration. It could be that Chinese intelligence wants flyovers of restricted airspaces.

DJI isn't "just" a company--it's an arm of the Chinese government. Trying to predict what's happening at the interface between those two is like trying to read tea leaves--only reading tea leaves is likely to be more accurate and consistent.

> So they must believe the feature’s existence is a bigger threat to the company than not having it at all, right?

No, they’re probably simply doing the CCP’s bidding by allowing agents of the CCP, who already are in these countries, to use their drones to collect intelligence, disrupt operations, etc.

This. The zones never have been complete and sometimes to restrictive. I rather have no zones programmed in because I know that I am fully liable anyway.

Cars don't refuse to get into one way streets and it's 100% the drivers fault.

It seems like a retaliatory move regarding the potential ban. If lawmakers are going to assert that DJI drones threats to national security, might as well disable the built-in geofencing and demonstrate the kind of threat they could be. Not saying this is right or wrong... but when the ban singles them out as a threat, and much of the competition doesn't the same level of safety features, you can imagine why they might want to retaliate.

I was just thinking about this, but with the Ukraine war going on, and both sides eating through tens (hundreds) of thousands of drones each day, the perception of DJI being a military company might very well be justified.

I mean, how many regular people buy drones, and how often? My guess would be one in 50 buys a new drone every 4 years. With that kind of demand, I guess Russia and Ukraine's drone demand might be equivalent to the entire Western world's

If those drones feed back camera data and telemetry, the Chinese might have access to the biggest military drone training dataset in the entire world by far.

They install their own firmware. See 1001 firmware, for example.

Also, it's unlikely front line internet is capable of streaming the video back to DJI.

A lot of people would rather DIY simply to not have nanny features.

This could be less about retaliation and more run of the mill profiteering.

With no long term future viable a short term solution might be to just unlock the drones and capture the rest of the market.

Which is what I think is happening here.

I don’t buy the excuse of DJI adhering to a principle that the responsibility is in the drone operator’s hands. Their motivation is almost certainly to cause disruption, aid in espionage, and do the bidding of the CCP. There have been so many instances of Chinese nationals “accidentally” flying drones near sensitive properties. Or accidentally approaching or encroaching on military property on foot or in a vehicle. And many properties adjacent to sensitive properties have been purchased by Chinese nationals or China-affiliated companies.

All of this is part of a continuous campaign of asymmetric warfare. We need to ban flight of DJI drones, disable them all through some means, or confiscate them all. Unfortunately that may only affect law abiding citizens and the ones looking to conduct espionage or disrupt operations will still just do whatever they want to do. But the bigger problem is that American politicians have been absolutely asleep at the wheel in managing China. They need to be FAR more aggressive with China, wage asymmetric warfare back, and even wage direct warfare by destroying key Chinese properties like ship building facilities, to reduce their ability to gain power.

>Their motivation is almost certainly to cause disruption, aid in espionage, and do the bidding of the CCP.

This reads like a carricature of patriotic 80s movie dialogue. At least it skips the bodily fluids part.

It's tit for tat for the threats of them getting banned, that's all.

Nobody needs commercial local drones for all that, nation states have had powerful satellites and other means. Jackie Chan flying a Mavic over some facility ain't gonna reavel shit anybody doesn't already know...

>>Unfortunately that may only affect law abiding citizens and the ones looking to conduct espionage or disrupt operations will still just do whatever they want to do.

Why suggest something so absurd

>>wage direct warfare by destroying key Chinese properties like ship building facilities,

oh.

> We need to ban flight of DJI drones

Is there any American drone company making better drones?

Not even close

Can I build an EMP device to take down a drone if it flies over my property?

Tight! Tight! Tight!

Drones should be banned but never any effort to ban guns, huh?! It is a rather odd focus considering a satellite can garner pretty much all the information a drone would.

US is now adopting more of China ideals, than China adopting US ideals.

From perspective of China, it seems they are winning as US is copying them. The bans, the protection of their industries, restricting free speech and building a surveillance state.

Good. Why enforce local laws if you're going to be evicted from the market anyway.

Drone flight is speech. If we're going all in on the 'tech companies must allow all speech' then this is what you need and get.

You think they care one iota about what you think? Until there is some consequence (ie. people that pledge to respect your rights challenge them in an election and they win) then they will continue enacting this trash without a care. Most of these politicians are so old they probably don't even understand what they are voting on.

Does this mean that Ukraine doesn't have to hack them to fly anymore?

Again, clearly we are in a Cold War with China. Why are they allowed to be connected to the Internet? Hopefully, on day one of the next administration, backbone operators will be prohibited from connecting to any network that connects to China.

I don't think implementing our own Great Firewall is the direction I'd want to see from the alleged bastion of freedom and democracy.

A destroy-on-sight policy for unauthorized drones in restricted airspaces seems like a good enough solution for this problem without online censorship. Don't want your expensive drone blown to smithereens? Don't fly it where you ain't supposed to be flying it.

(And on the flip-side, the FAA and other authorities need to provide real-time public access to maps of those restricted areas - which I wouldn't be surprised if they're already doing, but still)

https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/b4ufly

https://skyvector.com/ for one.

> alleged bastion of ... democracy.

They're referring to the new administration, so pivoting away from this designation.

Hence "alleged".

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